I'm going to do this South Beach session a little differently off the top because I'm very.

Biased on this one.

I've known Rachel Nichols for nearly 30.

Years.

And I've truly been amazed by her climb because I don't think people have any.

Earthly idea.

The degree of difficulty involved in getting her to where she was and where she is in a field dominated not only by cavemen, but also by perhaps the worst possible poison in the entire.

Content industry.

The soulless and entitled male media.

Executive who.

Thinks he knows everything when he doesn't know shit. Rachel Nichols was railroaded out of the mainstream media in a way that truly scared and horrified me. But we'll get to that in a second. First, I'd like you to know some things about the.

Woman I know.

She began in her early 20s as a writer at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. That's when I met her. Her ambition was easy to see then. But let me tell you something that scares the soulless and entitled male media executive who thinks he knows everything when he doesn't know shit, that ambition from a woman. Her ambition, which is expected and needed from a man who is a boss in any competitive field, is not quite viewed the same when it comes in a different package. It's easier to be a dick when you have one. There were some people who didn't like her because, well, there are some people who don't like me either, and you don't want to imagine how I'd be received or looked at if all the stuff I am, we're in a 250-pound, 55-year-old woman instead.

Of a 250-pound.

55-year-old man.

I.

Told you not.

To imagine that.

I'm sorry I made.

You.

Imagine that. I told you you didn't want to.

Imagine that.

I warned you. Anyway, I'm sorry, but climbing.

Is hard.

Climbing hurts. And Rachel climbed to the very top of our industry, building unbelievably strong relationships with the unbelievably strong men in basketball who aren't quite as afraid or threatened by a woman with ambition. Nba players trust Rachel, at least in part, because they see a mirror on their competitive ambition when they look at her and they admire and respect it. But you know what happened as soon as she climbed to the top with her reporting and relationships and professionalism and journalism, right? People accused her of sleeping with the players. The same way they accused people like Woj and Chams of doing the same.

Oh, wait, they don't actually do that, do they?

Rachel has had to live with and overcome that shit for 30 years, and she's had to hide behind a smile made for television. But in terms of sports media, there are not a whole lot of humans in sports, men or women as qualified as her. This woman, I'm here to vouch, is a gangster and a boss, and soon, hopefully, a partner. I'm so excited to work with her and all the smoke. I'm so excited to be a part of her Watch me now vengeance tour now that she's working for herself and with her friends instead of for fools. I'm so very grateful to have her in my corner as we build this network for DraftKings. But I remain flabbergasted and ashamed at the way my industry handled her exit from ESPN. I'm going to need you to trust me on this part. Her and I at some point, will talk more directly and openly with you about what happened to her at the end of her ESPN run. But we will not be doing that here and now in this conversation. It's one of the first times I've ever agreed to that stipulation in a journalistic setting, but I did it in the hopes of one day being able to give you the more complete story.

She didn't want to discuss that here right now, and I'm going to respect that. But you should stick around for what we do get into. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Here's Rachel Nichols.

Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm very happy. I've known this woman for a long time. Twenty-five years she's been covering, that's crazy to say, a quarter of a century, she's been covering the biggest stories in sports. I've met my match here because I assure you that she will interview as much as I interview here, so hopefully, it won't just be me asking the questions. Rachel Nicholas, thank you for being on here with us. It's very nice to.

See you. I feel like your audience is here for you, so I'm going to have them get to know you better.

That's fine. I want these to be intimate and a little bit uncomfortable for me as well. The goal is to make it feel like you're not making television, but you're just overhearing dinner conversation that you and I would have. And I guess now I've known you for close to 30 years because your first job was in Fort Lauderdale, right? Your first.

Professional job? So I graduated from Northwestern, and I had done an internship in Fort Lauderdale a year earlier. So I think that's actually when I first met you before I was even out of college. And then, yes, I was 21 years old. I moved down to the Fort Lauderdale, Miami area, and I was the backup on the reporter on the Dolphins and the backup reporter on the U. M. Team and the football team, which was at that point, it was Ray Lewis's senior year. And I don't have to tell you, but the audience knows how bananas that was. And there just weren't people like me there. And you were, frankly, the closest thing. And we are not super... We don't look alike. But the fact that I was really surrounded by 40-year-old plus men who didn't necessarily want a woman there or a girl as they saw me, and pretty much I was 21, so I'm not pretending I was older than I was. And they didn't want someone who was 21 there. And they thought, Well, she didn't earn it. She wasn't here.

Oh, I didn't know you felt that unwelcome from the start.

I didn't feel it. I was told. I mean, that's the thing. This stuff doesn't, at least I think now it's more coded. Back then, it wasn't coded. It was, We don't want you here, or, You're only here because someone had to fill quota, or, You're too young for this. Like that stuff, and directly and out loud.

I don't think of you that way as a pioneer because the women who came right before you, the Lisa Olsens had to walk in the.

Locker rooms. Christine Brennan, yes. Yes, no, 100 %. And I always make the point that with the players, those women definitely cleared such a path. And I think it was frankly, harder work within the media than sometimes with the players is that there was still so much more left to do.

Do you remember any specific cruelty that struck you because they were so overt, somebody just telling you to your face?

Yeah, sure. I'm a general manager of a team that will remain nameless. I was put on the beat. I was very young. I was the first woman to cover that beat. And I did the whole handshake. Hey, I'm going to be covering your team this year, whatever. Let's schedule an appointment to talk. Let's do whatever. And he just told me, he's like, Yeah, we... I don't think he said we don't want you here, but he certainly said a version of that. And he's like, I'm not going to help you. He's like, Because if you don't get stories, you won't be here very long. So I'm not going to talk to you about stuff. My door is closed, basically, not open.

Hello. Nice to meet you. My door is totally closed to you all.

The time. And clearly transmitted that to some of his players who were uncomfortable. Again, they just had never had a woman regularly in their locker room. I'm sure there have been women who crossed in there, but they hadn't regularly had one. And I had several key players on the team who gave me one-word answers. And very clearly the idea was they're going to make sure I wasn't good at my job and that that would get me out of there, which is what they wanted because they couldn't explicitly get me out of there. The era had passed where they would be able to say like they did with Christine Brennan or Lisa Olson or any of those women who I wouldn't be here without, I want to make that super clear, that was the real fight. We don't want women in locker room. We're going to fight it, that thing. That era had passed. And now it was we have to have you here, but we're going to make sure you don't stay. And like everything else, you keep coming to work and eventually people that became... It's funny. It turned into a really good situation for me.

But not before the GM was fired and replaced.

What did the.

Dream- I lasted longer than he did.

What did the dream look like for you then? What were you dreaming of? Certainly, it didn't look like this, right? No. You have overachieved beyond your wildest dreams, correct?

Which is different. I don't say overachieved, it's differently achieved because I want to be a newspaper writer. So I grew up in Washington, D. C. In that area, and I read Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon and Christine Brennan and Thomas Boswell and all those guys in the newspaper, and they were gods to me. The talent level of the Washington Post sports section when I was a kid and when I first joined it because I got very lucky and got to start working there in my early 20s was just... I mean, it's off the charts. You look back at those names. And I read all the President's Men 600 times in high school and just thought The Washington Post was the be all, end all. I went to print journalism school. I did not go to TV school at all. Never picked up a camera. I think now you're required to learn a little bit of everything that was not the case. They had a broadcast degree, and they had a print degree, and I got a print degree. And never in any way, shape or form wanted to be on television, had any thought of being on television, just wanted to be a writer, wanted to do what those guys did.

That was another place I entered in college, and they were so warm and adopting me and Tony and Mike are like my uncles in the business. And Christine had a huge effect on me because she was the first woman to cover a pro-NFL beat. So she was the first woman to regularly be on the beat for an NFL team, which was the last bastion of that. And I read her in the newspaper every day when I was still in high school and didn't know. I didn't know she was the first woman on an NFL beat. I didn't know she was the only woman on an NFL beat. I just knew that I loved that football team. And the person who I would read about them from pre-internet was I would open up The Washington Post in the morning and it was Christine Brennan. So by the time I learned that there weren't almost any women in that position or that she was the first or any of that, it was already done for me. Nobody could have told me like, Oh, women can't do this because my starting point was that a woman had done this.

Those kinds of formative experiences, Tony, Mike and Christine and all of that made me I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to work for that paper. And if I had done that for the rest of my life, I would have been happy. Frankly, I worked there for almost 10 years. And the only reason I left was because newspapers went through a huge industry change. And I'd like to say because newspapers existed back then, obviously, a lot of stuff has been revived. The Washington Post, in particular, which is awesome. But at the time, it was a real bottom dropping out of what you could do. And I started at The Washington Post and for years was able to... I covered tennis, and I went to all four Grand Slams for the whole two weeks. I mean, budgets like that don't exist in newspapers anymore.

No, our stories are similar. I think they're parallel. This isn't something that I imagined myself doing. It was just I was doing the same thing, reading newspaper columnists, and it's all I ever wanted to be. Was your family supportive of this from.

The beginning? Yeah, absolutely. But it was really my thing. They were just like, okay. I mean, when I was 13, I wanted to be a sports newspaper reporter. And there were even in college, you have to do a acquired internship at Northwestern, and they have a list of newspapers you can do it at. And Fort Lauderdale Sunset and I was one of them. And I went into that in the selection process and just said, I want to work in sports, so I want to do a sports internship. It's no good for me to do news. It's not going to get me anywhere. I'm not going to make any connections with anyone I'm going to want a job from. And I had to petition the Dean of the school because they've never done anything like that before. And so it was just a lot of steps like that.

Along the way. I didn't think sports was a serious journalism thing.

I was told it was the toy department. And I actually went back and gave the graduation speech at Northwestern about five years ago, which was really cool for me to be able to do. And I brought that up that people tell you one thing and you can go do another. But I do want to say, when I first got to the Miami, Fort Lauderdale area, you were the only one within, I mean, you're about five years older than me. You were the only one within a 15-year age of me. And you were so cool, Dan. You were this young... I mean, you were just make columnist, I think. You were everywhere. You had this amazing confidence, at least on the outside. And you.

Were- Everyone thinks I have it all together. I don't know what it is that I'm projecting on that one.

I don't think that now. You know better now. But I was 21 and you were the cool 26-year-old and you had friends. You were kind. I said to your producer, Matthew, I don't know how much you remember this, but to me, it was very formative because nobody was that nice to me. I was living in a new city. I didn't know anyone. And you're like, Oh, yeah, come out for beers with me and my friends. Come, whatever. And I was like, Oh, my God, I get to go out with Dan Leamontard and his guys and do whatever and hang out. And it was very much like, okay, someone I can at least relate to. And I wouldn't say we were particularly close, but it was one of those things where it's just like what you meant in terms of, okay, there's someone else there that is also probably being told he's too young and not quite accepted in the old guard and that thing. So it meant a lot to me. And it's funny, Matthew said to me, he's like, Oh, and what advice did Dan have for you about journalism or making it. I was like, Nothing.

We never talked about that. He just was someone to go have a beer with. And that was actually really important.

Well, I didn't know anything then. It was too young for me to even be a columnist. I didn't know what my voice was going to be or what it should be. I looked back at some of the stuff that I wrote back then. It was not... I've got diametrically opposed viewpoints to what do you know when you're in your early 20s about writing larger opinion pieces. But because some of this, I'd like some of this to be biographical. Your early years were like what? How do you arrive at being someone who's interested in this stuff?

I love the football team, and I was just in trance. We can go through the three names they've had since I was a kid, the Commanders now. But they won three Super Bowels from the time I was, I don't want to say eight years old to when I was in college. It was just a really fun team. The city was so into them, and that got me... That was the gateway, and that got me into other sports. But I.

Just loved it. Was there any connection with family members? No. Because for me, it was the way to connect with my father. My father introduced me to sports. And I would say that my father and I were closer than my brother was with my father just because I took an interest, and this is a connection point with my dad.

Did you know it at the time? Did you do it on purpose?

No, I did not know that I was being impacted this way. I was just searching for ways to connect with my father, and this was an easy place that didn't require a lot of conversation.

But what did you love about it? What was the thing that got you? Was it just I like watching games? Was it something more broad?

Well, I mean, at the beginning, it's just that I'm showing up at the Orange Bowl, and my life as an exile is very small. I'm walking into an amusement park that might as well been for me. I had no access. We didn't have money, so even Disney World wasn't available to me. So you're going from small exile life to this sprawling place that's noisy, and you're holding your father's hand as he takes you through the jostle, and you just get changed there, especially because it was a good place for me to have a deeper bond with my father. My father would then go... Originally, my father would show up to my baseball games and get very mad because I was striking out and stuff. I would show up after work with this tie and stuff, and my mom would explain to him, Look, I can teach him a lot of things, but being a man is something like you have to teach him. It's your department, buddy. Yeah. And so he would then become the coach of my teams and stuff. And so that was just a place because my father, very old school Cuban, emotionally limited.

And so it was just a place where I could feel connected to him in a way that I would assume any child needs.

You know it's so awesome you're talking about your dad, and we all know him. That's what's so great, is that I'm picturing this because I personally met your father, but your whole audience knows him, and that's very cool.

Yeah. That's just sad. That's the greatest. Yeah, I've said this before. It's just the greatest professional blessing of my life to be able to grow old with him on television and to share him with an audience that... I met your friend, Matt Barnes, the other day, and this was something that was startling to me. It's still startling to me, even though it happens all the time. Matt Barnes only wanted to talk about my father. The connection point between me and Matt Barnes was not sports or anything else. Him and his friends, they had some connection to that dynamic. That wasn't orchestrated. We did that just because they needed a Latin show on ESPN where they were underrepresent with Latins, and I don't look or sound or act Latin. So we put a cartoon Latin accent next to me. No, that's what we did. Then people got to know him. But God, I can't articulate to you what a blessing it was to have that experience with him for eight years, introducing America to him in a way that gave him a little more validation than being a factory manager in Halea.

For the rest of us, it was great to get to know him and all those years of watching him and how he was with you. But it's a way to get to know you because for a long time, Dan, you didn't let anyone get to know you on the air.

Well, this is what my father says. What my father said about this was, Man, I had a breakthrough with my wife just the other day where I'm weeping at a table because she is forcing me to accept that he did and did and does love me in the way that he can show. He always said that he was there, and the only reason he was there, that he didn't want to do television, which seemed... I didn't understand that my father's going from being a plant factory manager to being on television and being a popular person and didn't really want it. That the only reason that he was doing this, the only reason is because he wanted people to get to know the parts of me that he knew and that he saw. I always thought I was doing it for him. I always thought that this was a favor. My family, I would say, none of us are very good at receiving love. And this one I was forced to receive by my wife because she put on me like, No, you're not. This is not something that you were doing for him. He was doing it for you.

It was reciprocal. It was together. Anyways, off topic.

Well, so to get back to you and the stadium holding his hand, I think for me, yes, my stepdad love football games, so we'd watch them on Sunday together. But that wasn't a huge part of our relationship or our life. It was just a nice thing to get to do. My mom loves the Olympics, so we watched the Olympics a lot. But for me, it was just almost individual just falling in love. And I think it was a few different things. I think it was loud and exciting and colorful and people hit each other. And I still really like that. That's why I like football and hockey so much. But also, it had a defined beginning, middle, and end. And there were heroes and killers. And your team is the heroes. Obviously, someone else's team is their heroes. But that idea of that story, I had a somewhat chaotic childhood. And then I think everyone, by definition, has a chaotic adolescence. And the idea that that function was there and that it was defined. And I knew exactly what time it was going to happen. And when I was petitioning Northwestern to do a sports internship and allow them to recognize sports as a thing, one thing I said is I said I didn't want to be covering something where I was just asking everyone else what happened.

So if there's a huge fiber that breaks out, you get there by the time it's all ashes and you ask the people what happened and how did it start and all of that. And if you cover sports, the fire breaks out at 1:00 PM on Sundays, and you can be there for the whole thing, and you can actually witness what's going on. And I think that idea, even before I knew I was going to be a journalist or before I got into being a journalist, that was really appealing to me. And then the stadium part is the first time I did get to go to a game. It really struck me that I had never before in my life seen 60,000 people happy at the same time. And that moment in a game when just the huge wall of sound happens and people are cheering and jumping and high-fiving these strangers next to them, or everyone upset at the same time and angry.

But those emotions not present in a delivery room, like when you get the big job promotion, people jumping up and down for joy is very rare anywhere in life.

And to have that happen in the same space with that many people, it's literally nowhere else. We don't experience that anywhere else. And that became very addicting to me also.

You craved order, though? The order of it is something that you crave? Yeah. The scheduling, the thinking of it is something that you crave. Why is that?

It let me into the presence of it. It just let me be able to, again, I think that if you're searching for stuff in your life and you're like, Oh, this is orderly. I know when it starts, I know when it finishes. I know it has a beginning, middle, and end. That was very appealing to me. But I think to the way that you can put... I think when I was younger, it was, how do I have the things I'm thinking about or dealing with in my life? How can I make that a metaphor for what is going on in this game or in these sports? And I think that was very helpful for me. But I then as I got older and looked at it from a more professional sense, it really became, well, what is this game saying about all of our lives or about life. And that was something that was super appealing to me also.

The sociology of sports is so much more interesting than everything else.

And it's the only place we do it anymore. So if you look at all the numbers on the things that used to be communal, I mean, it's been talked about to death. Obviously, we don't the same shit anymore, right? So you have part of the country that watches these kinds of movies and TV shows, and you have part of the country that watches these kinds of movies and TV shows, but it's not just that. So, first of all, it's a big deal, right? We don't even follow the same news. We don't agree on the same facts, that thing. But then church and religious worship for all religions is way down in this country than it used to be. So it used to be that every Saturday or every Sunday, people would gather and hear messaging from whatever that religion was. Well, that doesn't happen anymore. Voting is, you know, not something that... We had a record turnout for the last presidential election, and it's still at what? Half the country? You know what I mean? It's not something that we all do. And the one thing we all do is watch games. And you know that this is true because if you look every year at the top 20 things that people have watched that season, they're all sporting events.

They're all sporting events. I think there's one in the Teens that was like the Oscars.

No, it's the top 100. The top 100 is all football.

You have to get to almost 30 before you get to Yellowstone. But, I mean, that's the thing. So it is where we have these conversations now about domestic violence, about police brutality, about this split America and how we can all get on the same page and how we talk to each other. And that fascinated me from the beginning also. And I don't know if that's order, but it is like a way to look at something and a way to make sense of everything else going on around you.

When you look at the difficulties that you had on the professional path, which are the ones on the professional path? Which are the ones that you look at where you're like, I had no training for that. I had no expectation of that?

I think how to navigate, first of all, TV in general. That was a huge leap. I started doing some TV on the side when I was still at The Washington Post. I did some appearances. My first TV appearances ever were appearing on The Washington Capitals, Home Team Sports TV station to talk about what was going on in the games. And then, gradually, I started doing things for Mark Shapiro when he was running ESPN and some outside the lines stuff on the side. And that's a very different thing than, hey, you're going to work at ESPN full-time now, and you're going to be doing lots of different kinds of things. And I didn't know how to navigate that. I never intended to be on TV. I had no training of being on TV. I was only there basically because I was following the resources. I love being at games. I love being at stuff. It love when I think about some of the most exciting moments of my professional life, it's not in a TV studio. It's witnessing these great moments in history. And at the time, newspapers and my newspaper stopped being able to do that for a while.

And ESPN could and did. So that was the reason I was there. And to then try to figure out the TV part was really hard because not only did I have no training, I didn't look or sound like anyone wanted me to look or sound like. Very much at the time, and frankly, still now, they want a cute young thing. And I ran up into, Hey, you're not blonde. Hey, you're not tall and thin. Hey, you're not polished and anchory sounding on TV. And was told over and over again by my bosses like, Oh, you're not going to be that for us. And you're in a different category. And the long term big success in TV isn't there for you because you don't look and sound like we expect women to look like. And I was trying very hard to be as close to what was out there as I could. And Stewart Scott actually pulled me aside at one point, and we become friendly through some of the stuff I've been covering. And he's just like, Rachel, what are you doing? And I was very taken aback and still pretty new there and like, Well, what the hell is this?

And he's like, Who are you trying to be out there? And I just want a mini version of what I just said. And he's like, Yeah, it's not going to happen. He's like, You're not growing. You're not getting taller. He's like, You're not going to sound like you've been at a TV desk since you were 20. My style is not this glossy presenter thing, which was very much what everyone wanted then. And he said that his style, which was so different, as we all know, was something that he fought with people he worked for, for years about that they told him for years that they didn't want that, and they didn't want him to be all the things that we now revere and think about Stewart for. And it's funny to me sometimes to see the people who told him not to be who he turned out to be now posthumously taking credit for that, which is having been there with him.

Is disappointing.

Oh, he had it tough. He had it.

Really.

Tough there. And he fought against that every day, and they didn't want him to be that. And he said to me, he said, I can be 100 % good at being me, or I'm never going to top 75 % good at being anyone else no matter how hard I try. And 75 % isn't going to cut it in this business. So he's like, Either you go out and you're 100 % of you and they like it or they don't. He's like, But I know you're not going to succeed the other way. And I was like, Great, but I'm not you. You're big and important now, and I'm just trying. And I'm being told no, this is what we want. And he was just like, Yeah. He's like, but that's not actually what's going to help you out. He's like, this is what's going to help you out. And that was a real sea change for me in terms of how I did the job and how I talked on TV. And my style is very much like, okay, here's what's going on, and here's what I think about it. And, oh, that light just fell?

Show the light. What the hell is happening here in the studio? Which still to this day, some of I've had bosses in different companies who have been like, oh, it's not really what we want. We don't need a fourth wall. And I'm like, But that's who I am. And that.

Was- People appreciate authenticity. They do. The people who will... Not only will they appreciate it, they notice it, too, because the veneer of television can lack some intimacy. Did you experience those things, those overt things that are nasty and unpleasant? Did you experience them as unfairness that made you angry or bitter? Or were you just like, This is how it is. This is how it's going to be. This doesn't seem right.

There was a lot of the latter of just... I mean, I definitely always felt like, Oh, well, you know what you're getting into? If you wanted a level playing field, this is the wrong business. And I think I just accepted that for a long time.

And you knew you were getting into that?

You knew you're entering.

Sports and it's going to be a fight? You're going to have to fight. Yes.

And that's the thing is I had grown up a scrapper and knew going into the job, I'd have to be a scrapper and then really had to be a fucking scrapper for a long time. And I think that that approach in the end, sometimes it's hard for other people you work with. And the problem is that I would never have gotten anywhere any other way. And I was over and over again, beaten down with, well, this isn't for you, or you're not good enough to do this. And only by coming back and coming back and coming back and being like, I'm still showing up and I'm still doing it, and I'm still going to hold on to this is the only way I got anything done. And that was largely because I came in at a time when, again, I was not the first. I don't want to claim ever I was in that first wave because I wouldn't even have had the shot without those other women. But it was a long time ago, and you talk about 25, 30 years ago. It was a long time ago. And I think we're so conditioned now to what we see on TV and what we see on the internet in terms of where women are.

And by the way, it's still a long way to go in terms of any level playing field. But it was so different then. And I had the attitude of, well, you knew what you're getting into. So when a bunch of the stuff happened of two weeks on a job, I had a supervisor send me an email, a company fucking email saying, this is what I want to do to you sexually. Oh, no. And you're just like, I've been here two weeks. How do I deal with this? Or when I was pregnant, I waited so long to tell them. I waited so long because I knew that this was not going to be good for me professionally. And I even- Oh, what a terrible feeling. -debated. I mean, I was married for 10 years before I decided to have kids. And a big part of that consideration was, A, do I want a little human in my life? But also, how is this going to affect the thing that I've scrapped for, that I've worked for so hard? That has been the thing that I've been able to finally break through and start doing more? And I knew, again, I knew what I was getting myself into, so I accepted it, but also knew I had to navigate it.

And I was told by a high up person, literally, I sat down and had the conversation of like, Oh, I'm pregnant. The words tumbled out. I was pregnant with twins, but I am going to have full-time living help so I can still get on a plane anytime you want. That's part of why I waited. That is part of why we waited so long was to get to a point in our life where we could say, great, we're hiring someone to help out because you can't do all of this alone. And this is how it's going to be, and you won't notice a difference and whatever. And I had the executive look at me and say, Well, this is great. Congratulations. I'm so happy for you. It's been so nice working with you. And I was like, No, remember the part five minutes ago about whatever? And he was just like, Right. But, I mean, you're not going to really be able to do the job you do now. And then I don't know what that's going to mean and whatever. And I said, But I am because of all the stuff I just said. I said, I looked across at his desk where he had pictures of him and his family.

I was just like, I'm like, stammering. I completely not composed. I thought it was an episode of Mad Men, which was on the air at the time. I was just like-.

This isn't real.

-but you have kids. I was like, Look, look, look at you. You have kids. He looked at me and he said, Rachel, children need their mothers. I was just like, Okay, so... And there's all sorts of things along the way, like those things that for a long time I just accepted. And I think later in my career, I started to fight back and stand up for some of those things, like the idea of women is interchangeable parts, which is still a huge thing in television of like, Great, we've got one. Oh, we want to hire another one? We're going to get rid of that one. Or, Let's just move them around to solve another problem because it doesn't matter. They're just the woman on set. We wouldn't do that with the men. We'll move them to a different sport. We'll move them to a different thing. We'll move them whatever because they're just apart as.

Opposed to- Was there a time or an age where you came to the adulthood of, No, I'm not going to keep accepting this. I'm going to start like punching people in.

The face on this. Yeah, for sure. And I think that ultimately cost me. And I wouldn't do it differently in terms of standing up for that. I might have done it differently and how I stood up for that. But I really felt a sense at the time, and I talked about this with a couple of the women I worked with at the time of, I just don't want to be like this for all the women who keep coming. If I don't say stuff about this stuff, who is? And I don't want to make myself out into some crusading hero because I was not. But it was just literally as simple as starting to not just accept everything. And there still isn't a lot of room for that in this business.

Where or when, though? Well, is there a spot? Because you have to have the bravery and the confidence of I have power and security enough to exert it. And that's not the easiest thing with bosses. For me, I've always respected or tried to respect authority. So I'm not interested in embarrassing people.

No, you want.

To be the good soldier, right? But not so much that it costs me my principles. I do want to help my employer. I'm not looking to cause problems, but on things like you can't become numb to this or you can't be someone as strong as you, Rachel, can't get defeated by this or quit or say, This is how it's going to be. I'm going to be okay with a man having family pictures on his desk telling me that I can't have a family and work at the same time.

I've been very fortunate. I'm and right now I'm working at Showtime, and I have a show on the network. And it's a show that I created and thought of with the producers I work with and executing with them. And that's the third show I've had where I've been able to not just be rotated into some network show, but to think of the show, launch the show, have it be my vision for the show, do it on three different networks. And I think getting that process starts to make you more confident in I'm not just doing what everybody else... I'm not doing your thing. We're collaborators. I certainly couldn't do it without you network, but we're collaborators on this thing. And therefore, I had felt like I had a little more standing to use my voice when this stuff came up. And again, it's not received great a lot of the time. And I think that's still something women are dealing with. The age of women in this business is always very young. And it helped me when I was young, by the way, definitely helped me out when I was young. They were like, Oh, she's young, and she's a little bit of a prodigy.

So great, we get both packages. But you look at the time and continuing on through today, sure like women in their 20s. And that's happened my whole career. And unfortunately, as a woman, you can't stay in her 20s forever. I mean, although we're in LA, and some people do try. I mean, when did you, for you, I feel like when I met you, you were already at age 26, a little bit of a leaning into being a wild child. And I don't know if that was an act because you were maybe internally trying to please the people around you or above you. But you definitely were leaning into, I'm a Maverick. I come at this differently. I don't give a crap what you expect me to say or do or defer to the coach or anything like that.

I would say I was just young and I was having success, and I had the privilege of being allowed to be dumb because I was pretty good at what I was doing, and so I was being rewarded. I didn't have these kinds of difficulties. I was... I was viewed... I was so young that much of that behavior, that's not me, like that was just somebody who was not yet adult. I would say that Cuban kids grow up a little bit slower. I was so consumed with getting to work and destination that the only place that I was a bit adult is in the thing that I could produce. I was still a child in many other ways. In some ways, I didn't grow up until I got to my but I would legitimately say that adulthood wasn't something that I experienced until my 30s. In my 20s, I was not-.

Man, you wrote like an adult, though.

Well, but that's why I got away with some of that stuff. But it wasn't nearly... It wasn't the same thing at all. I had a golden path compared to what it is that you're.

Talking about. By the way, I did have help from colleagues along the way. So Jason Cole, who worked with us down in South Florida, was the Dolphins B writer when I was the backup floating between the dolphins and the hurricanes. And a lot of days, Don Schula would see me and give me too much of a hug and put his arm around me in ways that kept the hand kept moving. Oh, no. Oh, no. And he was very old and I was very young and it was very weird. And Jason kept running interference. He would stand in a way where he would come around or just be like... And also physically.

That must have been so nice for you to have some of these colleagues forever.

By your side. It was huge. And again, I mentioned Mike and Tony were always great. And by the way, my boss at the Washington Post, George Solomon, was exceptional and hired women and gave me the confidence to do the job when the people outside of the paper were giving me a hard time. So I think that helped, too. I mean, you can't do it alone. You can't fight all that stuff alone.

Are you proud of how strong you are? Yeah, I.

Think so. I think it's something I have daughters. I have two daughters. I'm trying to teach them. I think you have to be in this society that we have with being female. I don't mean to be all make anything. It's never a single-sided issue. It's never about being a woman only. But it's silly to not acknowledge that you have to be tougher in a lot of ways. I mean, there's the... Did you see the Barbie movie?

I have not.

Seen it yet. There's a speech that's been put all over social media and talked about a lot and analyzed that America Ferrer gives, and she talks about all the things women have to be in the society. And you have to be really strong and tough to even start to navigate that. And I think the women you've worked with all fit into that category, right? Look how strong and tough Mina is. Like, Sarah, look at all the women that you have gravitated toward. They're all really strong.

But they've gotten strong inside of the industry. I would say they had to learn some of the things that you learned earlier. I don't think that they had to endure. Well, Sarah did some of it, but Mena was in business. But you got to that stuff a little bit younger than most people do. How did you become a scrapper? When you describe yourself a scrapper, how does that happen?

Because the thing I fell in love with didn't want me. I mean, it's that simple. I love sports. And it's so funny in television, especially there are people, men and women, who want to be on TV, and sports is the vehicle to get them on TV. And there are people who are very attractive and are picked up as being like, Hey, you should be on TV or let me encourage you to be on TV, or, You have dreams of being on TV, and you just fall into whatever the niche is sports, entertainment, whatever it is, they can get you there. For me, very much so, TV is the way I could keep doing sports after the original industry of sports that I was in had a big shift. And I loved it. I still love it. I want to go to games all the time. I'm going tonight to the Lakers Suns game. I have plenty of colleagues who are in the level of the business I am who barely ever go to an actual football or basketball game or anything like that for work, not just for fun. And I go all the time.

And I love it. And I.

Love it. You're Bob Ryan. You're Bob Ryan. Bob Ryan will still check out a college basketball game in Jacksonville just because he loves it like that.

And that it wasn't a hospitable environment, as we've discussed.

But that unwelcome. Perpetual. You always felt the drape of them, because you just put it very well, the thing that I love didn't love me back. But that can't feel that way now. You've gotten so much acceptance. You've earned so much acceptance that I wouldn't assume that you feel unwelcome now.

No, not at all. But that's what formed who I am. I mean, for you, you had this easier path that you just said you have a golden path. How did that influence how you navigated through things?

I mean, I became spoiled, and I made a lot of mistakes. I am mortified that you thought of me as a wild child because that's not... Look at me. That's not who I've...

It's not who I've ever been. Making Maverick is more appropriate, like a honing of that term. But yeah, that idea of you were not in the mold of.

What everybody else is doing. I always thought some of this stuff was silly. I remember having an argument with Renee Lachman in his underwear because the team is 30 and 31, and I'm questioning some fifth-inning decision that he made. He's like, What are you doing? I'm like, It's all sports.

Who.

Cares? He's dedicated his life to it. And I don't have an appreciation yet because I'm too young and too dumb to know, wait a minute, they're not just playing games. This is their identity. They care about this stuff deeply. They're not just fooling around. I just don't know enough about life. And so I was too young to be a columnist.

But I can't say- What's the biggest mistake you made?

Oh, my God.

I know you say you made a lot, and you've been in a lot of jobs from then to now. Is there one thing that if you could pick to do over, you.

Would do differently? I've done a lot of learning in adulthood that makes regret feel pretty useless because even things that were mistakes ended up in a pain at time that became growth or something that forced me into change. So I've gotten better at being gentle with myself on where it is that I've made errors. But I look back on a number of the things that I wrote in my 20s about just skewering Alonso Morning for his lack of loyalty. That's just not how I think anymore, and I understand the business of sports better, and I'm more adult. I've learned things and have more perspective. But wherever it is that I have harmed people, I try to be an empath and compassionate in the state of my life that I am now, but I didn't know enough about myself, the games I was covering, or anything else to be that. Then I'm following. You have to keep in mind, I imagine this was similar for you because what I'm seeing rewarded with success is whatever Mike Lupica is doing as a columnist. I'm looking for my voice. What's my voice going to be? How is this done by others?

And so you're copycating, you're borrowing, and you're filing it under learning when it's not yet learning. The learning will come when you've made the mistakes of doing that, and Stuart Scott has to pull you aside and be like, What are you doing? You got to be yourself.

Right. No, 100 %. Well, I think you always made interesting choices within... You use the fact that you had opportunities from a young age to make more interesting choices than a lot of other people did. And I always followed that about you. And that was one of the things that fascinated me the most, even after we weren't working in the same market anymore was, okay, he has a lot of these opportunities, and he's doing something different with them than other people. Did you set out to do that?

Well, what I was consistently doing, and I haven't thought about it until now, what I was consistently doing from very early on is the cluster of reporters would go over here and I would just go someplace else because I'm like, Well… But it was just a practical efficiency matter. I can get something for myself over here, or I can just- I don't even.

Mean the reporting, though, but in the career choices you've made.

The career choices I have made have largely been forced growth that goes back away. A long time ago, Pat Riley told me in a magazine story that I was working on, that if he could do it the most bravely on career choices to maximize his human growth, if it were possible to do, he would change careers every 10 years. Now, if it were possible to do that, so I.

Haven't- Did Pat Riley want to be a fireman?

I don't think a fireman is probably what he'd choose, but it might be something Schenectady related, but something where growth is required. I've done that with my career. But within the confines of where it is you can do things professionally. In my 20s, I was mostly a writer. In my 30s, I was trying all of it: radio, television, and writing and doing that. And then in my 40s, it became an amalgamation of the things. And now I don't write very much anymore.

And in your 50s, you decided, Oh, I can also have a personal life.

Well.

I.

Can try to have a personal life while also running a business because you said something a second ago that struck me. You're like, Well, I can't do it by myself. I need the help of the network. And here I am. I'm like the network. I got to make the network.

Like it's- But that's changed. That's changed over the years. So you couldn't do what you're doing now. Even 10, 15 years ago, you certainly couldn't have done it 25 years ago when you were starting. Sorry, 35 years ago when you were starting. I enjoyed that a little too much. The barrier to entry is so different, right? I mean, when we started out, you had to literally... I mean, I guess there was cable. Yes, there was cable, of course, when I started. But I.

Mean- I started. It was three networks.

Three networks, right?

Three channels. So there were three people making decisions about who could be on TV. And even once there was cable, there was really only a dozen people making decisions about who could be on TV. And it was like that for a really long time. And it wasn't just TV, it was the newspaper. You had to own a printing press. You had to own distribution networks to get the paper to someone's door in the morning. You couldn't just have people with alternate opinions. And for athletes, I know that was super frustrating because now they can have their own platforms and voice either formally or informally on social media, but it wasn't like that. And they could only deliver what they wanted to say through the funnel of, frankly, at those times, people who didn't look like them, didn't talk like them, didn't understand who they were, where they came from, or what they were dealing with. I think on the athlete side, that was really hard. And then on the young person trying to break into the business side, that was really hard. And now it's completely changed. And you don't need all of that. And you can be Dave Lavertard and have your own empire.

It looks like an empire, and it looks like I know what I'm doing. It doesn't.

Look like you know what you're doing, but it looks like you have your own empire.

I don't want to make you uncomfortable with any of the radioactive ESPN stuff, so I will stay away from it so that you don't get aggregated or so something terribly unpleasant doesn't happen. But I would like to know what you learned in the aftermath of you leave ESPN and then what is in front of you is what? Because it seemed from afar, and I hurt for you, like that would be a really scary thing to go through. That would still, like I was saying, not have regret in it now because of whatever it forced you into that opened up a new path that you may not have chosen if not forced upon you.

So it's interesting. There's two concurrent philosophies I had that one was really helpful in that time, and one I had to learn to get myself out of at that time. The thing that was really helpful was I didn't start at ESPN. I left ESPN one other time before I went to go work for Turner and CNN. I came back. So this me leaving again. Espn didn't give me my card to be a journalist. They didn't punch my ticket. I had worked other places for a decade before I even got there. I had established my identity and who I was. I had worked for multiple big media companies. So I had the perspective and had always seen it as, yeah, I'll work here for a while and then I'll work somewhere else because I've worked other places before I got here, and I'll work other places after I get here and that thing. And I think some people in the ESPEN system and it feels so big, it's all you can see, and then you don't have that perspective. And I think one of the nice things about getting older in this business is that you really do learn what you can't know when you're younger, which is that like, yeah, something seems huge.

And then three years later, it doesn't. And I think about Mar Valbert. If you were a sports fan who lived through the Mar Valbert back page at the New York Post everyday trial situation, you would never have thought 10 years later he would be where he was, much less 20 years later, much less everything that he went on to do. That It's so many different people who have gone through so many things that you learn as you get older in the business. And I don't even mean scandals. I mean just stuff. Oh, I had a show, and then it got canceled, or, Oh, I have worked at this... I did a newspaper and then I left and then it didn't turn out the way I hoped. And I joined, remember The National? Yes. The National is the precursor to the athletic and the more physical.

That sports writers all gathered in one place. In one place. Super expensive lineup of sports writing talent.

And guess what? Went under and all those people didn't have jobs, and it seemed like the end of the world. And yet guess what? They were great. They were super talented, and they all got jobs again. And having watched that over the years with other people and having known myself with my own experience of being like, yeah, this network isn't what gave me entree to be myself or do my job. They had me because I already was that person. That really helped me in that time because I was able to continue on that track. What I didn't know how to do and have only learned since was I had always worked for in an almost like gold retirement watch sense of this is how you... This is how you do your job. You work for a big media company. You progress from a cub reporter to a beat reporter to maybe a national reporter in a sport or doing features or doing that thing. And then you can be a colonist right at the newspaper or in TV, you're a field reporter, then you can come sub in sometimes in the anchor seat. Then you can be an anchor on someone on a show that's just one of those long running shows.

And then maybe you're lucky enough to get your own show that you get to totally create and do. And my thought, because those were the only environments, but even if I switched around networks, it was all within that work for a big company and retire with the Goldwatch scenario. I didn't quite understand what it was to be free of that and to be free of all the stuff that was crappy about that. And I mean, we've talked a little bit about the rest of your life and work and all that stuff, But by the end of my time at ESPN, I was working seven days a week. I was.

Working- I don't think people have any earthly idea what a beast of a worker you are.

I like working.

A beast of a worker.

You are. I like working, and I couldn't do it if I didn't like it, but it got to be ridiculous. I was in the studio five days a week, and then I was out at Nationally Traveling at Games on Saturday and Sunday. And I would joke about it. People would be like, Oh, well, when do you work? Exactly. And I'd be like, Oh, I work all the days. Which days do you work? I work all of them. And you almost think that's a point of pride. It's not. It's dumb. And I think some of the mechanics of working in a big company and the egos and the fighting for resources and scraps and the way women are pitted against each other in these companies and all of these other things, and you're dealing with the biases of the people above you and everything is just something I took for granted that it had to be that way. And the wake of that whole experience for me really opened up my eyes. And I knew media had been changing idea. I wasn't so head in the sand that I didn't know that, as we just said, the barrier to entries were falling and what people were actually watching and listening to was not the traditional stuff.

But you can know that. But when you're in that ESPN world, there is a lot of Stockholm syndrome of this is the only thing that matters. Cable television is still where things are at. Look at this, look at that. And then you get outside of it and you realize that... I had someone at ESPN again tell me just not early, but a couple of years before I left, we were talking and he had his phone nearby in his office. And I was talking about how do we get stuff more streaming? How do we make the show also a podcast? How do we get clips on the different parts of ESPN? So the different people, whatever. And the executive literally held up his phone. He's like, People don't watch TV on this, Rachel. They watch TV on that. And I was like, I don't know what world you live in, but this has changed. So I knew that before I left, but I didn't really understand that what had been the... What have been the downsides and then also just the restrictions of living your life. And I work for one company. I do one thing.

I follow their train track. I go up that progression. I may switch what that company is, but then I go do that at the other place. And taking a step back really let me see this new media world and be like, Oh, I've been here before. I lived through the change shift of newspapers, and I lived through the dinosaur days of then, Oh, well, you're going to have to switch to a different part of the industry. And so I was able to recognize, Oh, this is happening again. And I don't think I was outside of it enough to fully see that. And now it's just so obvious. I mean, ask anyone listening to this other than the games themselves, or maybe, by the way, also the games themselves. Where do you consume content?

But it wasn't Motherhood that did that to you, right? It was the seismic shake of, Okay, your career is now in peril or must be different, or, Here, you're on your own. You may.

Never come.

Upon it if not for the pain of falling down.

Yeah. I think it just shook me out of understanding where the industry was. And it shook me into understanding also what was important. And I think that, again, you can just do in any job, frankly, and this isn't just that job at that time, but in any job that's consuming. If you are a worker, which I always am, that you just everything out, you lose perspective of everything else. And I remember being young before I had kids and thinking like, Man, some of these people, not just women, but some of these people are like, Oh, I got to take time to be with my family. I'll be like, Oh, what's suckers? We all know that's just holding you back from getting to do the thing we're all trying to do. And then, of course, as I have my own kids, and then you are forced to take a step away from that treadmill and be like, Oh, right. The happiest moments I've had in my life were weirdly not an arena in San Antonio at 1:00 in the morning. Interesting. And and it's funny. It sounds dumb that you don't know that already, but it.

Takes a minute. But if you get your identity from your work, I want to ask you about how you became that worker, because for me, the thing that I was most taught, I will not insult my parents by saying it was the only thing I was taught, but it was far and away. Second place is a distant, distant second. If you work, I'm the son of exiles, if you work, you will have freedom. Work equals freedom. But then work can also become the prison where freedom becomes harder to come by because you are your work and you're working too much. You care too much about it, becomes too much of your identity.

Well, I was saying like, Oh, in your 50s is when you found out you could also have a personal life, which I think is your.

Audience is seen and is true.

It's not inaccurate. And it's true, why don't you have kids?

Wow! You're really getting in there. I, at this point, would say that I'm worried about bringing a child into this world, but I would have a... I'm older now. I'm 54. So the idea of having a 17-year-old at a graduation and being a grandfather, if I don't do it right now, it's not likely to happen. But I am scared of bringing a child into this world. The responsibility of that seems deeply overwhelming to me.

I agree. I think that is a smart person's way of thinking, and I understand it. And I had those thoughts before I.

Had kids. It also keeps me, by the way, from a larger love and my relationship with my wife growing to a place that it couldn't possibly without kids because I would assume that the teamwork of raising children together brings a couple together in ways that are super magnificent.

I would say even just within that first reason, one thing that really I realized, and this was through conversations with my husband and through other people, if you are a person who says, Gosh, I don't know about bringing a kid into this world, one of the real turning points in my head was, But don't you have a responsibility to bring more people who are thoughtful and community-minded and interested in helping children in the environment and everything else? Because if we don't have kids, the people who do the things that we find abhorrent, they're still having kids, and they're teaching their kids that stuff.

We have to start... I have to have kids so that there can be an army to oppose that army. I'm just saying if you're going to- So I could send my child out with a bayonet into that particular fight.

If you're going to… I didn't lead you down in this world argument, but if that's where you're going to live and that's where you're going to maybe possibly let yourself be sheltered by that so you don't have to think about the real stuff about what having kids would mean, I'm knocking down that argument.

For you. Well, I don't know at this point. I mean, having started a business and everything else, I am not to… And just generally where I am after the death of my brother and just the difficulties of my life the last couple of years. I'm not sure that having a child wouldn't make me and my wife just get off the grid and not do any of this other stuff that can be fun and nice but doesn't need to be done.

Some people in.

Our environment would argue because we now have 44 employees and some of the ones in our world haven't really worked anywhere else that I have rate... Without even knowing it, because this has been something that has been startling to me. Without even knowing it, I've raised a bunch of, I'm going to say kids because like me, some of them are Cuban in their 20s and not grown up when they started doing this. So our environment has, inadvertently, I didn't mean to do this. This was very much a surprise to me, but inadvertently, working 20 years with people who were in their early 20s when they started, that ends up becoming people you're imprinting for that fight.

I mean, look, yes, all that's true. Again, I wouldn't bring up the I can't bring kids into this world as my main reason. It was a reason for me, but that was my distilling or my counter to that reason. I'm not sure it's your main reason either, frankly. I mean, I don't know you that well, so I can't.

You believe I'm.

Lying to you. I don't think I think you may be- I'm being dishonest with myself. -i think you're protecting yourself.

Because I've given a precious little thought. Over the course of my life, I have not been spending a lot of time thinking about, should I have children? It's not.

Something that is- I didn't either. And by the way, I know there's some supposition like women want kids. And of course, she's on there pushing him to have a kid. I don't like babies. I didn't like being pregnant. Being pregnant was not pleasant. It was not some gooey, naturey thing for me. I still don't like a lot of other people's kids and have a problem that I will say that out loud sometimes in environments I shouldn't. Sorry. I am not a kid-oriented person, but I do think that what eventually change my mind, even with the threats to my career that were real that I saw, even with not being a baby person, even if not really thinking again, having that view in my earlier years of like, These people are suckers. That view is that it is a part of being a human that is completely different from anything else you've experienced. And yes, part of it is like, oh, you'll never know a love like that, all of that. But it's more nuanced than that. And that in the end, if you are someone who likes to... I would say there are two kinds of people.

There are people who want to eat and experience and taste and do things like that. And there are people who don't. And there are people who have, my husband wants to use the word appetite, like that you either have an appetite for life and for the world or you don't. You want to go hear the music you want. I don't mean introvert or extrovert. I just mean that you actually want to go out and experience life or you like sitting in your world.

What's interesting about what you're saying there is I would say that with my wife, I have just recently... By falling in love with her to begin with, I have a portal and access to a feeling that I did not know could be. So there's that.

You're familiar with that paradigm.

And all of my friends who have kids who think that because I'm responsible and loving and caring that I would do well in the of a child, all of them tell me you don't understand the ways that you will grow, the access to things that you will have that you have blind spots.

About now. I'm advocating it for you because it's a selfish thing, not because it's going to be good for the kids. I'm sure your kids will be lovely. They'll be fine. You'll be doing a good job as a dad. I'm talking more about you and that you are someone who I've always seen as being an appetite person, appetite for experiences and discussions and issues and food and love and sex and all the things that you're either a person who wants to do all that stuff or travel or you don't. And you are someone who to me has fallen into the category of I'm interested in the world. I'm interested in everything that's going on, and I want to taste and experience some of these things. And it is a whole major column of the human experience that you just either have or you don't. And I would hate for you who is so adept at navigating bigger things in the world, and you actually get the marrow out of them and you actually appreciate. You don't just walk by and be like, Oh, yeah, Eiffel Tower. That's nice. What travel means, what being with people who aren't like you means and actually getting out of those experiences what they're meant to be to have you miss out on one of the big human experiences to me as your friend feels like a loss for you.

And I'm sure the kids will be fine.

How did it change you?

I definitely had no idea that this whole pocket of the world existed. It was so flat to me. When other people were having kids around me, I had kids later than a lot of my friends, it was just like, oh, yeah, you got a baby now. And here's what you got to do when you have a baby, and you got to take care of it, and you got to do this, and you got to do that. And it was just very flat surface of the practicalities. Practicalities are not that appetizing if you're not a baby person, right? And I didn't understand the inner nuance of, oh, watching someone learn about things is fascinating. So when you have a little kid, when you have a two and three-year-old kid, you could literally tell them that cows control whether the moon comes out at night or not. You can tell them anything. And they're like, okay. I mean, you can tell them like, oh, right, a chicken. The noise it makes is ribbit. And they'd be like, okay, chicken, ribbit, all that stuff. And it's so interesting and gives you such a good perspective on this is just one little thing.

But when I first had kids on how people learn things and how we, as a society, will teach our kids one thing in one pocket and one thing in another pocket. And in some cases, how undoable that is, because if you were told from the very first that chickens go ribbit, it's hard to get you to the clock. And I think it changed the way I talk to a lot of people because it gave me a different perspective on where people came from and what they thought and who told them that and all of that stuff. And even the people who might have given me a hard time for being a woman in a business they didn't really want to see women in, it changed my perspective on how to talk and deal with those people. And that's just one thing. That's one thing when my kids were two. Through elementary school, you learn all kinds of other categories of things. And it's just such an interesting, and you do love them in a way you don't love anyone else. And that's interesting, too, because you love your brother so much and your mom and you love your dad and you think, oh, maybe it would be like that.

You love your wife. It's different. It's not greater or worse, it's just different. And again, that's something you could experience that you're not experiencing now.

Would you advise your daughters to choose your career path?

Neither one of them is as... They play sports. Both my daughters play sports. They like sports. They'll sit and watch football with me. They'll engage in basketball when I talk to them about it and stuff like that, but they don't love it. I loved it. I love it. And I don't think you can be in this business if you don't love it. I mean, I know people are. And as I said, people use it as a path. They use sports as a path to get the things they want. Tv, being on TV, being famous or whatever. I don't think you last, and I don't think you the experience is what I would want for them. So I keep telling them all the time, I want you to do well in school because I want you to have the choice later. To me, all that hard work, and you talk about being a worker and what work meant to you, work to me, it meant choice that I could if I worked hard enough, then the thing I wanted, I could get or that I had choices. If I didn't work hard, I didn't have choices.

I can't- So.

It's not a lot different than what I got.

Work equals freedom. And that it wasn't so much, I think that the nuance difference is like, it wasn't the freedom to do anything I wanted. It was the freedom to do the thing I wanted and to have those choices available to you. And I think for girls, in general, the more educated you are, if you don't marry the wrong guy, you have choices left. And there are women who, unfortunately, find themselves with they've married wrong guy and they've not working because they were raising kids. And then all of a sudden, a lot of their choices are taken away if they then decide to step out on their own. And I think that that's true in a work environment, too. So I want my kids to all the same work ethic stuff of work hard, but the work hard is to get to do the thing you want to do. So I really mean it when I say to them like, I want you to be happy, but I want you to be happy by doing something you wake up and love every day.

Do you have balance now? Have you arrived? Because it took me a long time to get to something that felt like balance. My wife would say, Even still, I don't like it when she says it that I have some workaholic in me. I don't want to think that I am that, but I am getting closer and closer to... Even though this makes it difficult to running a company, I'm getting in adulthood closer and closer to something that feels like a happiness balance.

I think I'm closer to it. I don't think it's possible. Really? Yeah, especially for women. I think that the myth of you can have it all is... There's an expression I heard a while ago that I really like of women can have it all, but just not all at once. And I think that that's true. And I looked at the pictures on the desk of the male executive and said, But you have it. You have it. And I think that it's not really, truly possible. The win is to have it all at different times. I was trying to think, I think it's called Arrival. That movie really made me understand the idea of nonlinear time in a way I didn't before. And it changed the way I think about things of having it all at once is that there are different times in your life, and the most recent stuff should not be waited anymore than the other stuff. And that you can go back mentally and visit any of those times in your life. It's not just the stuff that's happened in the last five years. So what I might have now, I have more of a weight on this part of my life.

But that doesn't change the fact that at different points, I had a weight on that part of my life. And that I think, again, I think achieving a perfect balance is impossible.

Why do you think it's impossible for women, though? Is it because the world was built by... You're living in a man's world? First of.

All, I think it's impossible for you, too, by the way. I don't think that's just a women's thing. I think there are men out there who are also trying to figure out how to do what, when. I think that It don't think it's possible to give yourself as fully and completely to either side as you may need to at the same time as doing it on the other side. There are physically not enough hours in the day. You can think you're doing it all, but you're not quite. And I think that the way they complement each other the best is that they do clarify each other in terms of, great, this used to be my whole life. Now I have children, or now this other parts of my life is more important to me. So it makes me distill down what work I really have to do and what I don't. And flip side, work is really important to me. So it makes me distill down what I have to do and what I don't. And it's not just my kids, it's friendships I had that I, frankly, I didn't realize I could have as good friendships as I have currently right now when I was so focused on other things and had such imbalance that you're physically not there, you can't be as close friends with someone.

And now, they're some of the most important things in my whole life. Is that balance? I have more of it, but it's not a perfect Libra scale. I keep hitting the microphone.

Your producers hate me. We're going to let you go on that note. Even though you are a polished television personality, you have hit this thing. I have hit this. You've hit that thing. I know.

I talk with my hands a lot, and this is a very constricting.

Environment, Dan. And you got really in there with me on not only do I want to know why you haven't had kids, you're wrong for not.

Having had kids. No, no, no, no. And by the way, I don't think I want to make clear before the internet comes after me. It's not right for everyone. I respect and appreciate. And there are some people I'm like, You should not have children. I don't think kids are great in any circumstance. I think for you, my friend who I've known for decades, I think that you would appreciate what there is to appreciate about it.

Always appreciate you. Thank you for spending this time with us. Good to see you again. Thank you. Good to see you again. Thank you.